The sad thing is, MOST spam can be fixed today with simple rules. Most spam I get has the following in common:

-Name with a number-No picture-zero to tiny number of followers-Links are always to the same domain, sometimes even same URL. Only variance is generally a parameter at the end

Basically, if you have no followers, no picture, number in the name, and have already @ someone with a same link, don't let it happen. If you actually have followers, might be a different story. At any rate, there's plenty of rules they can do to stop or severely slow things down.

I hope it helps, but I just looked in the mirror, and my face isn't blue from holding my breath. I'm tired of the spam provoked by mentioning any of a slew of "keywords". I scrupulously DM @spam with each unknown @ who @s a bare URL, but, of course, there's always more unknown @s. (It's a thankless job. There's no rest for the wicked.)

As personally I couldn't give a f**k what some celebrity had for breakfast, or the blatant retweets without checking of any facts.

And I'm being quite generous with that 90% figure.

What, are you just reading random things out of the twitter stream? and why would you follow stupid celebrities if you're not interested in them anyway? I follow 100 people on twitter, they rarely post what they had for lunch (except one: Anthony Bourdain, that's his job). I get one or two spams per month and very little that doesn't interest me in my feed.

As personally I couldn't give a f**k what some celebrity had for breakfast, or the blatant retweets without checking of any facts.

And I'm being quite generous with that 90% figure.

+1

I consider it 100% spam, which is why I don't ever plan to join. I had the same opinion of Facebook, but unfortunately the trend to force login to some sites using FB credentials has forced me to create a bogus FB account. I'm hoping the trend doesn't expand to include Twitter, but if it does I will be forced to Twitter-up as well.

Twitter and Facebook are good depending on how you use them. I follow tech journalist on Twitter mostly. Complaining about the adbundance of undesirable content on Twitter is stupid because you choose what you see on your timeline. Most people are aware that you should mostly talk to people who have similar interest to you and what you consider good people. You call these people friends. Just follow people who you consider to be friends on Twitter ( if you could actually meet them) and ingore the rest just like real life. It's that simple.

Sorry no.Much to my distress Facebook has become the family nexus and I basically had to join because it had become the way family news was spread. I had low expectations, very low as I remembered by brief stint on Myspace but nothing could have prepared me for how incredibly bad Facebook is and every time I log in I am amazed all over again that such an amateur hour piece of crap like FB ever got any traction in the market.

Sorry no.Much to my distress Facebook has become the family nexus and I basically had to join because it had become the way family news was spread. I had low expectations, very low as I remembered by brief stint on Myspace but nothing could have prepared me for how incredibly bad Facebook is and every time I log in I am amazed all over again that such an amateur hour piece of crap like FB ever got any traction in the market.

Facebook was actually quite good back in the day when they were only letting uni students on, when they had no apps and when all you had was a nice simple wall. It was a simple, clean and effective communication tool/ method of sharing drunk photos.

I'm kind of shocked that the original post and the comments are so uncritical of this. Twitter should be ashamed of itself. I don't like Twitter spam any more than anyone else, but I took a glance at a couple of the services, and they just seem like tools that can be use properly or abused. You can set all kinds of parameters to target very narrowly, and what's so bad about that? Or you can spam broadly.

The worst thing here is that these small (probably 1-man) companies will have to deal with a deep-pocketed rival in court for years and years. This will destroy their lives. Take a look at the crazy legal interpretations of web activity that are happening now in the U.S. and Europe. It's a "First they came for the …" situation. Anything and everything is being made illegal. Is it safe to start up a small development company anymore? Are big corporations the only places that we will be able to safely work?

Patents: How can you avoid a lawsuit here? Anything marketing related: You are a scumbag on privacy and spam grounds. Personalized services? Forget it, spam and reverse engineering crimes. System level utilities? Privacy and reverse engineering. Privacy protection apps: You're trying to shield perverts. And on and on.